


if you lived here, you'd be home (now)

by siyatania



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fix It Fic, Lance is going through IT, M/M, PTSD, Single dad Keith, Takes place around a 10 years post canon, but apart from that its Canon Compliant (TM), cw: breakdowns, cw: implied alcoholism, i promise they will heal, its not as bad as it sounds though, keith has a teenage daughter who is way taller than him, lance is not altean and adam is still alive because i said so, slow burn????, this fic deals with mental illness in fairly gory detail so please take care, will add more tags, world building?????
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 13:20:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17919569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siyatania/pseuds/siyatania
Summary: Lance decides to travel to the other side of the universe in a fit of desperation.Keith has no idea what's about to hit him. (Or maybe he does.)In which maybe things work out the second, or third, time around.





	if you lived here, you'd be home (now)

**Author's Note:**

> aaaa its 3am and this is unedited (i will look at this in the morning and scream) and terrible but like so is voltron and it still aired. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> in case you didn't read the tags cw: mental illness, implied alcoholism, mental breakdowns, etc.
> 
> i love you.

It’s his birthday.

He’s thirty. His family is here, and _loud_. They managed to hire out Varadero-fucking-beach. For _him_.

Bright lights reflect across the water. He avoids looking at the stars. Lance has his feet submerged in the sand, and his head submerged in thought, and his heart submerged in stone, and he’s sipping on the terrible vodka tonic his sister made for him.

It’s so _gross._ Him and the drink. But he keeps sipping. He loves his sister. He’s thirty. He’s staring at the waves. And he’s thinking about how he’s done nothing but lie in this exact spot the past decade or so. The waves come in. _Sip_.  And he’s thinking about how people only keep him around because he conned them into thinking that that the part he had in saving the universe was more than marginal _._ _Two sips_. The waves drag out. And he’s thinking about how his dead almost-girlfriend would probably be incredibly disappointed in him right now _._

It’s his thirtieth birthday, but he’s always been terrible at self-reflection. Or any reflection.

He upends his glass into the sand.

 

Later that week, he joins a group call with old Voltron. Things go how they always go:

“Hey Lance!” Hunk’s the first to greet him. They’re still in close contact, he and Hunk, and he enjoys spending time with him, he really does. He’s got a rock-child on each arm and a huge grin on his face, and at the back of it all, Lance can hear Shay singing like a windchime. It’s all too pretty, and unreal, and he remembers why he hasn’t visited in over two years.

Pidge, the only paladin still in her twenties, shows them around her robot facility and all the latest techno-stuff she’s working on. Lance can’t help but smile exhaustedly at all her energy. And frown, because fucking seriously, is he eighty now?

Keith’s audio is messed up. Cross-universe amounts of distance will do that. But he gets his message across to Pidge via handsignals, which Pidge then purposefully mistranslates (the middle finger shows up loud and clear.)

Shiro-and-Adam are doing the usual Shiro-and-Adam stuff. Lance zones out as soon they start talking about how they saved a million baby animals last weekend, something he assumes they do as a cute husband-date every other week.

Lance ( _an afterthought,_ he thinks), doggy-paddles his way through a conversation about his birthday, and how his family is doing well, and how he’s helping at an animal shelter (a venture that he hasn’t shown up to in _months_.) All in all, he puts a pretty fair appearance in.

It’s strange, then, how concerned purple and middle fingers burn into his nightmares.

 

 

 

Next week, he’s lying on his sofa. And somehow, it’s worse.

He’s sipping on the shitty beer he bought himself and staring up at his ceiling. He breathes in. _I’m so fucking useless._ He breaths out. _I’m so fucking pathetic_. He sobs, and it almost dislodges the stone in his chest.

It’s not like he’s ever been good at self-reflection. Or any kind of reflection. Or any kind of prolonged thinking.

He smashes the half-full beer bottle against his apartment wall just to see what will happen. And the does it again with another one. And he does it again. He laughs.

And he cries. He cries so much he feels like he’s going to die.

He’s thirty. He’s been thrown, punched and shot in the back with a space bazooka. And this is the worst he’s ever felt.

 

 

 

Lance is tearing his apartment apart (trying to ignore that he can’t remember _why_ ) when his dialler pops off.

He always keeps it on. It’s a safety mechanism. He’s had recurring nightmares about sleeping through the castle alarm for as long as he can remember, and he never wants to be too late.

It’s why he always answers.  Just in case the universe needs him.

“Hi - Lance, it’s me Keith. I was wondering, do- why is there a huge pile of broken glass behind you?”

The universe doesn’t deserve him, honestly.

“The universe doesn’t deserve me.” He says as matter-of-factly as he can while slowly sliding off his couch into a puddle of beer.

“Okay……”

Purple eyes are darting around everywhere, and Lance is frankly sick of it. Sick of purple, and sick of people trying to pussyfoot their way through a conversation with him. He could hurl with it.

He does.

And when he’s finished ( _funny how his mouth doesn’t taste any different_ ), Keith’s still there. _Weird_.

The eye contact ( _Purple!_ ) launches him out of his shock.

“Can you stand up, Lance?”

He can’t form words in response. He doesn’t want to anyway. He stands.

“I need you to walk to the bathroom.” Keith’s got this weirdly determined look on his face. Maybe purple isn’t so bad.

It's a while before Keith actually lets him in bed. Lance keeps returning to the beer-puke-glass pile by virtue some kind of demonic, unsanitary gravitational force. And he doesn’t always want to do what Keith says, and he says as much, and worse. But Keith doesn’t raise his voice until it’s time to get him unclothed – “Please turn off the video, lance” – and by the time he’s there he’s sober enough (and he’s emptied his stomach enough times) that Keith grudgingly deems it safe enough for him to conk out.  

He doesn’t dream at all that night.

 

 

And when he comes to, he wishes he hadn’t.

Lance had thought he was immune to hangovers. He doesn't have time to dwell on his disappointment though, barely making it to the bathroom in time to heave. His whole body is throbbing, and he’s beginning thoroughly enjoy the thought of dying face down in the toilet when he feels something nagging at the back of his deep-fried-in-the-lavary-pits-of-hell brain.

Some _one_ nagging. He half-crawls away from the tiles to hide underneath his covers.

“Lance!”

 _Way_ too loud. He tries to say “what?” but he ends up sounding like an elderly seal being kicked.

“You need to drink some water.”

Lance bristles. “You nee’ to 'eave the fuckin’ seals alone.”

“ _Lance_.”

A tiny synapse of recognition fires off, deep within his lobes. And because its him, and he's cursed, he remembers fucking _everything_.

“Keith.” He looks up. Purple Eyes.

Keith stares back expectantly. He has the worst under-eye circles Lance has ever seen. Now that he looks closely, his eyes are spotted with red, too. The seconds tick by.

“Wait.”

Keith stifles a yawn. “…What.”

“Did you stay up all night? Did you watch me sleep?” Lance’s voice raises several pitches despite himself. And he’s lost the chance to play the amnesia card now too. _Fuck_.

“Someone had to make sure you didn’t _die_!” Keith shoots back, irritation finally spiking.

“I wouldn’t have!”

“Lance.” Keith pinches the bridge of his nose. The gesture squeezes something at the base of his stomach – it’s strong enough to make him seriously concerned about losing the argument. _Argumentum ad Vomitium_. “Please. Drink some water, and I’ll be out of your hair, okay?”

Humiliation boils up. **_Thirty_**. He’s acting out a particular bad educational sketch of 19-year-old baby's first alcohol poisoning.

“Fine.” He can’t think to hard right now. It hurts too much.

He lets Keith watch him down his third cup of water, this time with pain killers, and murmurs a thank you before settling down to slumber. He makes sure to hang up first.

 

The next week pans out _relatively_ okay. Compared to the rest of Lance’s thirty-year old life (it goes without saying that it hasn’t been much to talk about thus far.)

He cleans up **The Pile**. He wipes down the walls. He even does the washing. He buys bread and stuff for sandwiches, and he eats them. He doesn’t talk to a single other human being. He’s even thinking about trying to read a book.

 

Until Keith calls again, on the Friday, exactly six days since their last call ended.

“Come visit me.” Keith says it like he’s been holding his breath.

Lance tries holding his. It doesn’t hold the fear.

“I’m not going into space again.” He scratches the words out of his throat.

Keith frowns. “You’re not going into space. You’re going to my house.”

Like that even makes sense. “Your house is on the other side of the universe, Keith.”

“So is yours.” He can’t help but hide a half smile at that.

 

 

There’s still a dent in the wall where the first beer bottle landed. It’s depressing. Maybe a bit of Keith-logic is what his life needs.

He stuffs his book in his bag on the way out.

**Author's Note:**

> i want to hear everything you have to say. talk to me.


End file.
